Capper Bulletin from Topeka, Kansas • 18

The Making of a Corn State John Case Is Putting His State On the Map Ten years ago John Case was a country newspaper man of Whitesville, Missouri. Today Case is editor of the MISSOURI RURALIST, and farmer at large of Friendly Home Farm, Andrew County, Missouri. Case wasnt the usual kind of a small town editor. Born and reared in the country he knew the kind of paper farm folks appreciated. The Banner had a circulation of over 1200 and the net earning capacity of the paper was over $2,000 per year, but the population of Whitesville numbered scarcely 200 when everybody was home.

Aside from his editorial duties, Case was postmaster and general booster for the metropolis. He organized a village improvement association and invited the farm folks to get in and help boost. But it didnt work; the farm folks wanted something they could run themselves. What will interest women most? cogitated Case. Chickens was the answer, and so it proved.

Then why not add a corn show for the men? But the town men didnt think much of the idea. Corn was corn and anyway it never had been done. Even the state show was almost a failure. None of the farmers in that trade territory were interested in corn breeding, said the merchants. Why court failure by attempting something new? Working along in the same old rut wasnt one of Cases pastimes.

He believed that Missouri Missouri Needed farmers were capable of Corn Education doing things for themselves, and he believed, too, that only education was necessary to place Missouri in the front ranks as a corn growing state. But increased yield in corn production can only be brought about in one way. Plant scrub seed and you will have scrub corn. Improve the Quality, Increase the Yield always has been the motto of the state corn growers association, but highly resolving was all they did. A little group of men would meet at Columbia in January where a few farmers gathered to hear the college men talk, exhibit their corn, and go home to forget all about the motto until the show time next year.

There was no state wide interest, no state appropriations could be secured and both the yield and quality was mighty poor. Cases weekly began whooping it up for a big corn and poultry show at Whitesville. Things began to move after show dates were Page Eighteen.